


slight gray

by psuburbs



Category: Fantastic Four (Comicverse), Spider-Man (Comicverse)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, au where marvel as a company cared about johnny dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-27 22:40:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21126413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psuburbs/pseuds/psuburbs
Summary: All Peter can think about is if Johnny can feel it when Peter moves through his space, if Johnny can feel their pain. Maybe Johnny could put a name to the knot in Peter's stomach.





	slight gray

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by mitski’s puberty 2.  
content warning in tags.  
i am disregarding random elements of canon, more info in the endnotes.  
thank you to olivia for everything, i love you

**1.**

Peter found out Johnny died through a blog post. He opened up a new browser window to check his email and it was right there on the home page, below the humidity and the rain chances. The information was vague, press-polished, and efficient. Peter had to go fishing for details, had to send texts to several people on his personal phone and on his burner. He didn’t reach out to anyone in the Baxter Building.

He crossed the line of denial on his couch, alone. It felt like the wind on top of the Brooklyn Bridge, and it felt like the quiet snap of bone under webbing.

—

Peter didn't go to Johnny’s funeral.

He was planning on going. He rented out a nice black suit and everything. But he had a moment, when he was getting ready in his apartment, where he thought about what it would feel like to be around so many people who knew The Human Torch, and so few who knew Johnny. Nobody who knew what had been on the line in the first place.

He hung the rental suit back up in his closet. He wore the Spider-man suit under a crewneck and walked a couple of blocks to a coffee shop. He sat at a table and picked at his nails until a police car drove past with its sirens on.

Eventually, he sent an email to Reed and Sue and Ben. They told him that they missed him. This, selfishly, did not make him feel better.

_—  
_

Peter grinds out a steady routine of _patrol, sleep, repeat _for a while, until he realizes he can’t distract himself enough to stop thinking about Johnny. Every time he closes his eyes he sees the black-on-white text of an email from Sue. _ We missed you at the funeral._

So Peter goes to Baxter. It’s better than what he had been expecting. Nobody’s mad at him, which the worst parts of Peter had been anticipating. They just sit together and tell stories about Johnny. During the week after the news broke, MJ had tried to talk to Peter about it, but it had been too soon, and Peter had shut down. Now, he supposes, he might be ready to put words to his most basic feelings, and—

Johnny left Peter a recording. A hologram.

His blond hair is cast with a blue tint, and it’s shorter than Peter remembers it being. It looks freshly cut, not long enough to have any curl to it yet. Peter’s hand tickles with the phantom sensation of running his fingers through the hair covering the nape of Johnny’s neck.

Peter feels like he’s drowning. He listens to Johnny’s voice through the tinny speakers like it’s the only thing that has ever mattered, because it is. Johnny’s words are the first breath of air Peter has taken in _ such _ a long time.

Johnny gave Peter his family. His family gives him a white suit with a black spider across his chest.

**2.**

Johnny has been gone for 45 days. 1080 hours. 

Carlie broke up with Peter about a week after he was officially added to the roster of the Future Foundation. 

He left Earth on a Wednesday, ducking Carlie with the flimsy excuse of a business trip, and then fucking off with the FF. Because that’s what his life is now, he guesses. 

(Not that he isn’t grateful, right? This is what Johnny wanted. Johnny gave him this. It just feels hollow without him. Dressed in borrowed robes, Peter thinks.) 

On the following Friday, Peter returned home. Carlie had already removed her toothbrush from Peter’s bathroom counter and retrieved her clothes from his dresser. Peter figured that was fair. She was a literal, actual detective, so of course she knew Peter had lied to her. She probably got on the phone and figured it out within the half hour. She was good like that.

—

Peter spends a lot of time in the Baxter Building. There's always some new drama to throw himself into, and it's recklessly easy to find something to punch. If he’s lucky, he can distract himself for long enough to catch his breath.

He goes out and patrols all the way through the night, and then crashes back in for breakfast. He emails coworkers at Horizon, spends some time in Reed’s lab, and runs tests on some equipment to log time so he doesn’t lose his day job. Because it's what he's supposed to do.

**3.**

Peter doesn’t so much as glance at the door to Johnny’s room for over 50 days. 1206 hours. It’s an avoidance thing, or maybe a denial thing. Peter doesn't think it's particularly important, nor does he want to pick it apart, so he leaves it alone.

When he does, inevitably, enter the room, it isn’t premeditated or anything. He had been on patrol, wearing his own red and blue suit, pretending like everything in his life was normal. In this normal world, Peter would have slipped through the window that Johnny left unlocked for him.

Peter sticks to the exterior glass of the 31st floor of the Baxter Building and he freezes. He focuses on the sound of the wind rushing past him. He swallows around the lump in his throat; he slides the window open and crawls inside. 

His feet reach the floor with a dull thud. The carpet under his boots is flattened from years of wear. Peter looks around the unlit room, and he sees a shadow of himself crashing in through the window after a close call, bleeding and bruised. He remembers knowing Johnny would help him. Remembers Johnny’s hands, steady and calloused, wrapping a bandage around his shoulder.

He sees himself swinging across town, on a different night, running on fumes but feeling impossibly light. He remembers the adrenaline in his system and an itch under his skin. He remembers Johnny smiling up at him and giggling, warm and bright, singeing his sheets.

The room is dark and cold. Johnny’s bed is tidy, and all the drawers of his dresser are closed tightly. Peter slips off his mask and lets it fall to the ground next to his feet.

Peter feels a buzz at the base of his neck. The door that connects Johnny's room to the living room flies open with a familiar burst of luminescent blue, and Sue is standing there, backlit and framed in the doorway. She is strong and intimidating. Her face is lit by her own glowing hands.

Sue’s eyes dart around the room; to Peter, to the open window, to the bed with two unmatching pillows.

“You didn’t set off the alarm,” she says, and it’s an honest observation, but it lands with the force of an accusation. The tension is gone from the line of her shoulders.

Peter holds eye contact. He says, “That makes sense.”

Sue stares at him. Peter, for a moment, humors the idea that she is actually a telepath, and he forgot, or someone forgot to tell him. It would hardly matter, though. All Peter can think about is if Johnny can feel it when Peter moves through his space, if Johnny can feel their pain. Maybe Johnny could put a name to the knot in Peter's stomach.

Her eyes soften.

"Come into the living room. Franklin can't sleep. We're watching Dog Cops."

—

Sue leaves and comes back with a light blue sweatshirt for him. It's soft and warm, and Peter is thankful. He tells Sue as much. He is sitting on the couch with Franklin tucked against his side, and they are watching Dog Cops. Sue is moving around in the kitchen. She says:

"You're in the family. You know that, right?"

Peter figures that he should, in fact, know this. He hums an affirmative and his eyes slide shut. He listens to the TV, and he can hear Sue start the dishwasher. 

Franklin’s breathing evens out, eventually. Peter stands up, slow and deliberate, and lays Franklin down, careful as he can manage. Franklin's eyes stay closed and his breath never catches, so Peter considers it a win.

Sue has emptied a cabinet of tupperware onto the island in the kitchen, where she is sorting through it meticulously. Peter sits in one of the barstools directly across from her. Dog Cops is playing softly in the other room.

“You’re still Franklin’s favorite,” she tells him. Peter smiles for her sake and picks at a fresh scab on his knuckle. 

“He’s a good kid.” 

Sue puts a stack of lids on top of a stack of containers. “I wanted Johnny to be in his room when I opened the door.”

Peter looks up at her and says  _what_, very quietly, even though he definitely heard her. She screws her eyes shut and shakes her head.

”Nothing," and she pauses, "I don’t know.” She doesn’t look up from her stack of tupperware. Peter looks at the way the light is bouncing off of her hair for several silent, painful moments. 

“I want him to be here, too,” he says, and it feels like a secret, so he picks at the cuff of his sweater. Then he remembers it isn’t his sweater, and he feels bad, so he stops. He chews the inside of his cheek instead, and stares at the blue subway tile on the wall behind Sue.

Peter can see her staring at him in his peripherals. He wishes he could turn invisible.

“How are _you_ feeling, Peter?” Her voice is soft, the way it is when she talks to the kids.

Peter looks at Sue's face. Her eyes are sharp and blue and very sad. There is a ring of light brown around her irises. She looks exactly like Johnny. Peter wants to cry.

“I’ve been worse.”

_ 4. _

_johnny comes back. a lot is happening at once, so they have their moment at the gate and then they need to move on, because they have to deal with a kree invasion. peter feels like the kree are pretty irrelevant when johnny is right in front of him. _

_johnny tells peter about what it was like in the negative zone. it takes a couple of months for them to get there. johnny keeps waking up with nightmares, and peter keeps sleeping next to him. sometimes peter wakes up while johnny is in the bathroom or the kitchen, and he forgets how to breathe until johnny comes back to bed._

_peter leaves his white-and-black suit in a pile of johnny's dirty clothes, and he never sees it again. _

**Author's Note:**

> on canon divergence:  
\- i made carlie dump peter because i am the author and i do not care  
\- if i fucked anything else up it was intentional. my city now.
> 
> [tmblr](psuburbs.tumblr.com)


End file.
